


So Cruel, So Bright

by Mercurie



Category: 15th Century CE RPF, Historical RPF, Original Work
Genre: Alternate History, Bittersweet, Christianity, Gen, Hero Worship, Loyalty, Magical Realism, Miracles, Platonic Female/Male Relationships, Wordcount: 5.000-10.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-29
Updated: 2015-04-29
Packaged: 2018-03-26 09:59:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3846667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mercurie/pseuds/Mercurie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Joan of Arc steps unburnt from her execution pyre with a new mission from God.</p>
            </blockquote>





	So Cruel, So Bright

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: "Joan of Arc, she survives the pyre"
> 
> Title from Leonard Cohen's "Joan of Arc"
> 
> I stuck with the Anglicized version of Joan's name for ease of reading. Some liberties taken with history to simplify the narrative.

_Paris, 1431_

This time the walls have fallen. Paris is liberated. Or taken, depending on how one sees things. 

Jean d'Alençon waits in a sunlit courtyard of the Hôtel des Tournelles. A groom has spirited away his horse. His heart is thumping in time with its receding hoof beats on the cobbles. Yesterday these sprawling, tower-studded grounds belonged to the Duke of Bedford, regent of the King of England; today they belong to the Maid. 

It's a year since he saw her last, outside the very walls of this city they failed to take together. Now she's taken it without him. It is a miracle. He had doubted her when they hadn't taken Paris. She had blamed the king's hesitancy, but the small voice had whispered in Alençon's mind _but Jehanette, this is no Orléans, no Jargeau, no little town with little fortifications, this is Paris with its mighty walls that even you cannot simply bull your way through._

It had been reassuring, in fact, that even the Maid could not do everything. He had loved her a little more for it. But she was right after all: God intended Paris to fall. She is always right about what God wants. 

There is, of course, another miracle far greater than this one, a miracle without which he would not be standing here now. It's not yet real to him. He can't quite look it in the eye. He won't quite believe until he has seen her himself, until he has made sure this is not some imposter masquerading under the title of the Maid of Orléans. 

The rumors have made the earth feel unstable under his feet. Angels descended from the sky to lift the Maid out of the flames. No, the fire burned so hot the spectators could see nothing until Joan the Maid stepped out of it unharmed, clad in cloth of gold. No, tears ran from the wood when it was set alight and quenched the fire. No, it was blood. No, a holy spring leapt out of the ground. No, the flames simply refused to touch her, bowed down as if she were a queen. 

The rumors multiply every hour, but they all agree on one thing: the Maid was condemned to burn, but the Maid lived through the flames. _A miracle._

At last someone comes to fetch him. It's La Hire, the mercenary captain, who comes to lead him into the interior of the complex. He clasps La Hire's hand, a bit too hard, like a drowning man clinging to a rope.

"Is it really her?"

La Hire is a prickly sort, but he presses Alençon's hand back with equal force. 

"In the flesh. And in the spirit. I wouldn't believe it if I hadn't seen it myself." He gives a nervous laugh. Uncharacteristic.

"Did you see – were you there –"

"No. We were at Louviers. Harrying the countryside. Would've raided Rouen if I could've, but it was thick with Englishmen. They'd tied her to the stake before we could get close." He stops, takes a breath. "We heard the rumors first. Peasants talking, I thought. But then she came walking through the woods. In a _dress_." He barks a laugh. "Never thought I'd be shocked to see a woman in a dress. But she's the Maid."

"Has she spoken of me?"

"Never stops. She wanted to send a messenger after you, but there was no time and we needed every man for the siege."

Alençon follows the La Hire out of the spring sunshine and into the cooler depths of the Hôtel des Tournelles. The complex is worthy of a king, with its galleries and parks, its chapels and gardens, its fanciful maze, its bedchambers and reception chambers and council chambers. Bedford's arms still appear here and there, not yet torn down by the Maid's men. Business is ongoing, servants and men-at-arms alike hurrying through, stopping to glance at what to many of them is a familiar face. All of it passes before Alençon's eyes like a dream. _She is here. She is really here._

She receives him in Bedford's council chamber with its colored tiles and great round table, its big windows showing a view of the crowd of little towers that give the complex its name. She's bending over the table, feigning indifference, but he can see her nerves in the way she straightens too quickly when La Hire ushers him in. The door closes behind him, and they are alone together. 

Joan looks just as she always has. Short, wiry, sun-darkened, her black hair in a severe men's cut, her eyes bright with that inner light that compels men to believe even when reason scoffs. She's dressed as a knight, in hose and gold doublet, and a sword lies before her on the table. 

"Mon beau duc," she says. _My gentle duke._

In two steps he is there. He embraces her. The black straight hair tickles his nose; she makes an _oof_ sound and he realizes he's crushing her. He lets go abruptly. 

She's human still. That more than anything eludes his understanding. She is made of the same bone and blood as every other soul on this Earth, and yet that bone and blood have passed through fire unscathed. God has touched her, and now he, Alençon, has touched what God has touched. He should be in fear, but she looks so ordinary, so herself. 

"You little fool," he says without thinking. "How could you let yourself be captured? It was death for you!" Anyone else the English might have ransomed or simply kept prisoner. Not the Maid of Orléans. He had wept when he'd heard. 

"My horse threw a shoe at a bad moment," she says wryly. "You'll have to take your complaint to him."

"Did you know what was going to happen?"

He's thought of this, riding through the night. Could she have allowed herself to be captured, allowed the trial to proceed as it did, just to work the miracle that would finally prove to all the world that she was heaven-sent?

Joan shakes her head. "No, I..." She hesitates, and when she speaks again he understands why. "I had put my faith in God, but I never expected Him to transfigure the fire for me. I hoped for a rescue."

She puts his shame into words. She was the savior of France, and not one of her former comrades – least of all the one to whom she had rendered the most service, the Most Christian King Charles VII – made a move to save her when she needed it. Charles had ordered Alençon to keep the English in the northwest busy, and so he'd been far away when Joan's executioners in Rouen put her to trial. 

But this is prideful. Why should Joan need his protection, when she has God's? He tells himself as much, but doesn't feel comforted. 

"No one will doubt you now," he says. "Never again. Not even the English." Nor would any dare lay hands on her again.

"Oh, the English aren't doubting." Joan smiles wolfishly. "They're running. I dare say half of them are deserting. We've had a steady stream showing up to offer their services. The rest will be out of France as quickly as their ships can carry them."

"Then you've succeeded. France is free."

"I succeeded in my first mission. But I have a new one."

His skin prickles. The sunshine feels chillier. "The voices?"

Joan's eyes have the fixed look he knows too well. It had struck him like a blow when she'd first ridden into Orléans to fight under his command: that perfect confidence, the assurance of a stooping falcon certain of its prey. 

"They came to me again on the pyre. Stronger than ever before. A great white light, a cold light, and a roaring so loud I couldn't hear the flames or the crowd. All of them at once. I cried out to them – I cried out to Jesus and Mary and the saints – and they answered me."

Alençon's voice sounds hoarse in his ears. "And what did they say?"

"They said they did not spare my life for pity, but for a purpose. Freeing France was only the beginning. God has more work for me to do."

"What – what work?"

And Joan the human is gone. The light in her eyes makes the sunshine seem dingy. No wonder the fire didn't swallow her, Alençon thinks; she's swallowed it, she drank it in just like she drinks in battle and horses and soldiers and adulation and awe. She is a saint walking, but a bloody saint, and ever since she came riding out of her little backcountry village everything has crumbled before her. She's about to tell him who will crumble next, and he is transfixed, and he knows he will beg to be at her side when it happens.

"A greater work," she says. "One I can't do by myself. I'm going to need help, good help from people I trust. I have La Hire and his men, but they're mercenaries. I need someone of noble blood, someone who knows the courts of Europe. I need you, my duke."

He has already done homage to one liege lord. The King of France. It is treason to swear to another. But Charles never walked through fire; no, Charles has never even led an army or fought in a battle. Charles couldn't stop the English from tramping brazenly about in half of France, ttaking Alençon's own duchy. It wasn't Charles who punished those who held Alençon prisoner after Agincourt, those who gave him the mocking nickname of the poorest man in France. 

And his oath to the king had kept him away from Joan when she needed him. 

Alençon is on his knees before Joan says another word, and the shadow of doubt is already burning away.

"I am your man," he swears.

***

_London, 1432_

Wind gusts through the pavilion flaps to dry the sweat on Alençon's brow. It carries the stench of the Thames. They are all sweating, the lords and captains and the child King Henry VI himself, not from the heat so much as from the tension. 

It's a delicate matter, surrender. For the English, who only a year ago were masters of half of France, it must be almost incomprehensible how quickly their fortunes have reversed. All because of this girl, the girl whose armies have laid waste to the south of England behind them. Victory after victory has fallen into Joan's lap, and not only that: towns have opened their gates without a fight, Englishmen have deserted their homes and their vows to follow her. Alençon has seen women too, dressed like men as Joan does herself, and not a one of the soldiers lays a hand on them. Another miracle. 

Joan herself is the only one present who appears perfectly comfortable. Magnificent, even, in her knight's garb. Why should it be otherwise? She is here to command, and the rest of them to listen.

"I accept your surrender," she says. "I wish no ill upon England or upon His Grace the King." She smiles at Henry, whom God has seen fit to make not only a boy in a time of war but a simple one at that. "I will take my army and depart, on two conditions."

Every man in the pavilion leans forward, tense as a bowstring, the child-king and his uncles Bedford and Gloucester first among them. 

"First, the English will make no further wars. Not against France, not against Scotland, not against anyone."

A ripple runs through the assembled group.

"An end to war is surely desired by all reasonable men," Bedford says. How it must sting, to be chased out of Paris and then all the way back home after he'd thought to have rid himself of her – yet he hides it well. "But what if England is attacked? Are we to stand defenseless at depredations of our people, injuries to our honor? You hobble us, good lady." He stumbles over the final word. The clothing still disconcerts them. And her lack of a title.

"It's ridiculous!" Gloucester breaks in. "The _Scots_ –"

"The Scots will do nothing," Joan says. 

"An Englishman can't but turn around without a Scot sticking him between the ribs," Gloucester growls. 

"The border will be peaceful, my lords. I lay this condition not only on you, but on your neighbors and on all the nations of Europe. There will be no more war between Christian peoples."

There is silence. Alençon has known this was coming. He has listened to Joan outline her plan, fervently, with a supreme boldness that leaves him in awe even though her idea sounds as, well, ridiculous as Gloucester claims. Peace in _all_ of Europe? Never in any chronicle has such a state been recorded. 

But if Joan commands it, then God wants it, and so it will come to pass. This Alençon knows.

Indeed, the English lords are wilting. What would they even fight with? Their soldiers are slipping away to become Joan's soldiers. 

"And the other condition?" Bedford asks.

"I am told the Bishop of Beauvais has taken refuge in London. Turn him over to me." The steel in her voice is unmistakable. It chills him. This is something he has not heard. Pierre Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais, was the man who directed Joan's trial, but Alençon had not known that he'd fled to England. 

He mulls on this until the meeting ends, then follows on Joan's heels when she leaves it. Her new standard flaps above them on the tent: a white pennant, no longer bearing the image of Jesus and the angels, but of a holy fire and the words _Jhesus Maria._

"Beauvais?" he says. 

"Abused canon law, his office, and holy justice." Men stop what they're doing as she passes through the camp and bow their heads, or just bow. Even now Joan isn't proud; she nods and smiles here and there, absently, between words. 

"What are you going to do with him?"

She hesitates. It's the first time he's seen uncertainty in her in months. His hand hovers over her elbow, not touching. _Jehanette, what is it?_

She's never spoken of the trial, but he's heard the rumors. They kept her chained by the legs in a cell. No, by the arms, too, and the neck. They refused her confession. They refused her clothing. They tortured her with beatings, or with hot irons, or by dunking in ice water, or by starvation. They refused her counsel and chased away those who would have given it to her. He has heard that she was violated, by one man or many; but he can't believe it. She is a maid still, her power proves that. God remains with her. The other rumors, though, those he cannot dismiss out of hand. Nor can he forget that they were done under this man Beauvais' aegis.

Can vengeance be holy? Is Beauvais part of Joan's mission? The man is trivial. If Joan's voices have demanded his punishment, she would not be hesitating. Still, she has asked for him. The English will hand him over, and she'll have to decide what to do with him even if her voices are silent on the matter. 

"Give him to me," Alençon says.

Joan slows, stops. He stops with her.

"To you?" She thinks. "What for?"

"To see that justice is done. It wouldn't be right for you to concern yourself with him when it's well-known that he wronged you. You would seem partial when a judge should be disinterested."

Not that he is disinterested. Not in the least. But Joan is the saint, not him. He can stoop to the very mud beneath their feet when she can't so much as bend her neck. And he will do it, for her. 

He knows he's said the right thing from the relief on her face. He's taking a burden from her shoulders. She can devote herself to peace in Europe, and Alençon can see to it that the Bishop of Beauvais gets his due.

"Yes," she says. "Thank you, Jean." 

She uses his Christian name rarely. Her voice rings beautiful as a bell when she says it.

He'll remember that, the sound of it, when he has Beauvais beneath his hands.

***

_Rome, 1435_

A light rain falls on the crowd. No one takes any notice and no one leaves. The square before St. Peter's Basilica is brimming to the point of overspill. On the platform before the church stands the Pope, Eugene IV, but though he is speaking in strong and flowing tones, few eyes are turned in his direction. 

No, it's the Maid the crowd has come to see. The epithet has taken on an immense stature, a talismanic power. Alençon can hear people whispering it even now. A maid? This is a warrior-saint, the angel Michael in human form, God's will clothed in flesh come to work miracles. That is what they see, the assembled Romans and other Italians, and the honor guard of soldiers surrounding Joan and her captains and her advisors, shielding them from the crowd.

They've all the heard stories, but Alençon has lived them. First the wars between the French and the Burgundians and the English quelled. Then the Scots gentled. Then the wars in Bohemia, Slesvig, Prussia and Poland, Lombardy. The whole continent of Europe has fallen still. Everywhere Joan has gone, the fighters have broken old allegiances and discarded their petty skirmishes. 

But not laid down their weapons. Most have chosen to follow her instead. She has collected them, over the years, into a great army such as has not been seen since the ancients, and brought them here with her. 

All for this moment. 

Alençon is not listening to the Pope's declamation. He already knows what it will contain: the words _Holy Land_ and _true Christian knights_ and _crusade_. The greatest crusade of them all: the one that will, finally, win back the blessed places, so that all of Christian Europe lies united and whole again and the Saracen is driven back. He knows this already and he knows that it will come to pass. There is no battle the Maid can't win and nothing she can't conquer. This is why she was sent to them. 

He scans the crowd instead of listening. 

When the movement he's looking for comes, it's doesn't come from the populace. It's one of the soldiers who slips, suddenly and quickly, from the outer ranks of the box enclosing Joan into its heart. _Traitor._

Alençon is quicker. He has the assassin on the mud-smeared flagstones before he can take another two steps. Easy, obvious. He's looking around for the trick when the horse Joan is holding by the reins rears, screaming. A wave of noise breaks from the throats of the crowd. 

He's too far away. Bodies, horseflesh obstruct his view. The man beneath him struggles and bucks. If he lets go, the assassin will escape, but Joan –

He lets go and pushes his way through the soldiers who have tightened ranks around the Maid. 

"Joan!" he shouts. "Let me through, you dogs!" Damn them all if they've failed in their duty and damn him too!

A space is opening around where he left Joan. Complete silence falls on the crowd like the shadow of a hawk. Alençon freezes. 

Joan's horse is prancing away, snorting. A man is on his knees before her, a knife dangling from his hand. Joan's white coat is half-drowned in red, a long streak like a banner.

Alençon doesn't breathe. _Too much blood._ He struggles against the press of the guards. How can this happen, now, here, after everything she has accomplished? How can he have let it happen? How can God let it happen? And into his mind flood all the whispers and insinuations he has heard in the last few years – for not everyone has welcomed the Maid and her peace and her remaking of oaths – insinuations by men like these assassins. Witch, that they called her even in Orléans. Demon. Devil-ridden. Touched by Lucifer. Even, almost inaudibly, superstitiously, _Anti-Christ._

No, no. She's Joan. Jehanette. 

He can't tear his eyes away, so he sees every detail as Joan raises her hand, wondering, and runs her fingers down the red staining her coat. He sees them come away dry. He sees that the fabric is not wet and there is no slash in it where the knife went through. Joan is not turning pale, not falling to the ground. No trace of pain crosses her face. 

The second assassin moans aloud, dropping the knife onto the flagstones, but the rising voice of the crowd buries the sound. The people push inward. 

Alençon finally fights his way through. Joan is already swinging back onto her horse. The coat that was white is now slashed with red, not with blood but merely with cloth of a different color as if it had been tailored that way. Joan's face, too, is flushed red as she raises her hand to the crowd. 

"Joan the Maid!" they shout in ecstasy. "Joan the Maid!"

They have a witnessed a miracle. God has preserved his instrument, in full view of the people and of the Pope himself, forgotten on his platform. 

Joan rides onward. Alençon finds his own horse and follows, but the crowd sweeps her away: an idol, a distant thing made of marble and porphyry. The proof of God's love here on Earth. 

He follows anyway, and so does everyone else. They will follow her to Jerusalem. They will follow her to Hell if that is where she leads.

***

_Constantinople, 1439_

Constantinople is a collection of scattered houses and sheep huddled inside a mighty wall. It hasn't been a great city in centuries, but now it is home to a great army. Alençon can see their camps, spread out in the open spaces inside the defenses, as he climbs the crumbling steps to the ramparts.

The Maid is on the walls again, looking south over the Bosphorus. To Asia. She comes nearly every day to stare out over the edge of her realm. No, she isn't its queen or its empress. She rules nothing except her own followers. But she is, Alençon thinks, its maker. Its shaper. 

Behind them, the city has been transformed, and behind it, the whole continent of Europe. Thessalonica is wrested back from the Turk. Every scrap of land the Ottoman Empire held in Europe has been retaken. The enemy, once bold enough to lay siege to faltering Constantinople as they pleased, have fallen back to their strongholds in Asia. 

All this the Maid has achieved through force of arms. But she has done other work as well. Not directly – one could never describe Joan as a diplomat, though she's become wiser over the years – but her presence, her relentless victories, her faith and the faith of her followers have shifted the balance of power among those born into it. He brings news of such a shift today.

He finds her pacing, stopping occasionally to focus her distracted gaze on the other shore. The wind is gusty and salt-ridden today, blowing in from the sea and carrying, too, the fine dust of the poorly-kept walls.

"I have word," Alençon says, and she stops, turning to him.

"From the Council?"

"Yes. They have ratified the union."

The banked fire in the Maid's eyes leaps. "Yes," she says. "Yes!" Her hands come down on the ramparts, gripping the weak stone. She is grinning, exhilarated, and as so often he is sure she can see something he doesn't, something far greater than the news he has brought.

"Everything has come to pass as you wished it."

"Not as I wish. As God wishes."

And as many men do not. The Council of Florence, after years of deliberation, has ratified the union of the Roman and the Greek Church. A single Holy Mother Church now unites every Christian in Europe. Many in Constantinople and elsewhere oppose such a union. But the basileus and autokrator of the Romans, John VIII Palaeologus, has consented, and with the Maid and her thousands of followers in the city, what can the Eastern patriarchs do? For though the Maid has not spoken publicly of her support for the Council, her opinion is well-known.

"Thank you for bringing this news to me," she says. "You have lightened my heart. Now only the Holy Land remains, and all will be ready."

"Ready?"

He's but a few spans away from her, but the Maid is so distant he may as well be gazing up at a painting of heaven. He has to make an effort, now, to think of her as Joan, Joan of Arc, Joan du Lys, Joan of Domremy. Jehanette. The names are too small, too gentle and soft, for this bonfire that has burned away the rot of schism within the church and fused into a single sword the warring princes of Europe. Even though he has been with her every day of her mission, he has come to understand it less and less, for he understands her less and less. 

"Haven't you guessed?" she says now, with a touch of her old humor.

"Guessed?" His tongue is heavy as lead in his mouth. He is tired, he finds. Tired of traveling and of war, but most of all tired of trying to match Joan's zeal and her purpose. 

"What we're building. What it's all _for_. I've been thinking about it for a long time. Why France? Why did the voices tell me to help the French and not, say, the English? Burgundy? Why, then, end all the other wars? Why a Crusade? And now this Council, timed so precisely to coincide with our coming. When we began I could only see each piece, separate and unconnected to the rest. But now – now I see it all. Do you understand?"

Alençon shakes his head. _Tired._ "You're the one who receives the messages. The rest of us poor mortals can only follow." Follow and believe.

"He is coming, Alençon." The Maid turns back to the sea. "He's coming back. We are making the world ready for him."

"Who?" Alençon asks, though unwillingly. He can guess. He doesn't want to.

"You know who."

It takes him a long moment to gather words again; the wind seems to have scattered them all from his lips. "You have seen this? Your voices have told you?"

"No," she says firmly. "His coming will be unannounced, even to me. But use your reason! What else is all this work for? Peace and a unified church reign from Dublin to Constantinople. You know as well as I that what we've done can only be temporary. Princes and patriarchs will quarrel, war will return, and there are many who would see the church torn apart again if they could. They're only in abeyance now out of fear and awe. But when the Lord comes again, everything we have done will become invincible. _He_ sent me to prepare His kingdom for Him, a kingdom of peace and faith, but no one else can make it everlasting. No one else can rule it."

The Second Coming, Alençon thinks. The Day of Judgment and the return of Christ to Earth. Does the Maid truly believe this? There is no doubt that she does. She would never joke about a matter like this. She hardly jokes at all, now. 

Can Alençon believe it?

Christ's return is an event every true Christian ought to yearn for. Still, it's something he – as, no doubt, most other true Christians – has assumed would happen in the far future, long after his own death. For the first time the promise of the Scripture becomes real to him, not simply a story but an imminent fact. 

He tries to imagine the Kingdom of Heaven. Will it truly be here on Earth? Will Jesus Christ rule the world like an Emperor? Or will all men die at His coming and rise again? And is it not said that before He returns there will come another before him? He hears again the whisper of a rumor that, from time to time, comes to his ears: _Anti-Christ._ And is it not said that the seas will burn and the earth will move and all the nations will mourn? 

He is no theologian to answer such questions.

He follows the Maid's gaze over the sea to Asia. Whatever else, everything they have known will change. The world will change. It will change so much he may not recognize its final form. He experiences a sudden pang of homesickness for his own duchy of Alençon, which he has not seen now in so many years. 

He looks at Joan, but she doesn't look back at him. No, no. He cannot see what she sees. His heart is not big enough; there is only room enough in it for the Maid, not for God and God's great plans. He can only cling to her and to what she has made of him. What does it matter if he understands or not? He is her right hand. The hand does as the brain directs.

"Heaven preserve us," he says. _Preserve me,_ he thinks. _And her._

***

_Jerusalem, 1441_

"Why don't you go speak to her?"

La Hire is as blunt as ever. To Alençon, anyway. He's never been blunt with the Maid. Even a rough mercenary like La Hire is wax to her flame.

"I have. We all have."

"Well, try again. We can't bloody well stay here forever."

So he goes. La Hire is right, after all: this limbo is good for no one. They can't remain an occupying army forever. They must settle and rebuild this city or they must leave.

The path up the hill is familiar to him. He knows where the Maid will be. He skirts the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, its rocky domes baking in the sun. Up the hill with his legs burning from the effort. Jags of white, powdery stone stick out of the grass, which is dry and flaxen. Insects hum in the afternoon heat.

Joan is praying on her knees at the very summit of Calvary. Place of the skull, it means, and Alençon's skin still prickles with fear at the knowledge that he is here at this place where, so many centuries ago, a covenant was made with God. A covenant whose fulfilment Joan is now awaiting. 

She kneels under the full force of the sun. Her skin has been burned brown by the days outside. She doesn't turn at his step.

"Joan," he says.

"Am I needed?" she says, still not turning.

Is she needed? For nearly a year she has held Jerusalem. Held it, and waited. Her followers, who once lived in camps, have moved into the city. Military discipline has slackened. Rumors fly. They are waiting, too. What will the Maid do next? Will she rule Jerusalem? Will she put on her armor and soldier on, slicing into the heart of the Ottoman Empire, into Asia, on to India? A new Alexander. Or will she fortify Jerusalem and turn around, go back to simmering Europe to extinguish the small sparks of war that are flaring again in her absence? They wait and wait, and none of them know what they are waiting for.

"You are needed," Alençon says. "Your leadership is needed. _Yours_ , Joan, not God's."

"One isn't possible without the other."

He bites back a curse. She's so unyielding. Her iron will has driven them forward so far; now it will drive them too far, into ruin. The Turk is regrouping, the princes of Europe are chafing, the churchmen are squabbling behind their backs while they dally here in Jerusalem waiting for a miracle even the Maid can't bring about.

"He isn't coming," Alençon says.

Joan shudders. He draws nearer. She's not so unyielding after all: her clasped hands have dropped onto her knees and her head is sinking like that of a tired plow horse. 

"He must be. He _must_ be."

"We've waited a year. No – we've waited fourteen centuries and more. When He comes, He'll be unannounced. You said so yourself."

"I know. I know!" And miracle of miracles, Joan sounds tired. "But why else was I made to do all this? Why was I saved from the fire and from the assassin's knife? I understand nothing. Ten years later, I still understand nothing. Has it all been for nothing?"

His knees land in the dirt beside her. He seizes her hands. 

"Nothing? You saved France. You've ended the shedding of blood everywhere. Thanks to you, a peace prevails that hasn't been seen since the days of the _pax Romana_. How is that nothing?"

"It will all fall apart, Jean. You know it as well as I do. Princes and nobles love nothing better than their rivalries and slaughters. Nobody short of God himself could hold the peace together. I'm not even sure I can hold Jerusalem."

"But you can try," he says. "We can try."

She looks at him, not the marble figure now or the distant saint, but only a woman in man's dress. In her battle-hardened face he can still see the traces of the girl who grew up in the war-torn borderlands of France and Burgundy, in a time of foreign invasions, a time of Pope and Anti-Pope. A time of endless division and conflict. He knows only too well the terror and uncertainty of those times. He, and all the others like him, have put their faith in the Maid to lead them out of that terror. As for Joan, he has never seen her own faith waver. Her confidence in the mission entrusted to her has been unshakeable. 

Until now.

"They're gone, Jean," she mumbles, and he grips her hands tight. "They don't speak to me anymore. The voices are gone. The angels are gone."

"Since when? For how long?"

She answers very slowly, painfully. "I haven't heard them since we took Jerusalem."

It must cost her a great deal to admit that. The Maid is her voices. Divine inspiration is what moves her. Why people follow her. But Alençon's heart grows strangely light at the confession. 

"Perhaps it's over. You've done what they wanted you to do. You've completed your mission."

"Have I? Maybe they've abandoned me because I failed them. I misinterpreted them... I did something _wrong_."

"How can that be? Why would God grant you such success if you weren't doing His will?"

She shakes her head, mouth opening and closing without words. 

"No, you haven't failed, Jehanette," he insists. "You've succeeded! This is a mercy. God has given you back your freedom. Now you can choose what you want to do without angels commanding you every step of the way."

"But without the voices I'm nothing! Just a peasant girl in a man's coat. And everything I've done will be dust."

He can see it: the bright vision of the future, the Kingdom of Heaven cruelly snatched away from her. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. But then, as Joan has told him so often herself, God helps those who help themselves.

"It doesn't have to be. You're still the Maid, savior of Orléans, Paris, Thessalonica. Constantinople. The Holy Land. The Pope has blessed your works. People have seen your miracles. Ten thousand men await your order down in the city. You don't have to let it all collapse. Take up your sword again, fortify this city, and come back to Europe. Keep the peace that you've fought for so long."

She has heard him. She closes her eyes and thinks for a long moment.

"Will they still follow me? Even now that the Lord no longer speaks to me?"

Alençon laughs. "La Hire will follow you into Hell. As for myself, I would follow you even beyond that, if there is a beyond." He suppresses a shiver of terror at saying such words in this place, the holy place of the Lord's sacrifice. But truth is truth, and God will know what is in his heart whether he speaks it aloud or not. May he be struck down where he kneels if it pleases Heaven.

Joan opens her eyes. In the silence there passes between them an understanding. The time of war is over. Now they must preserve what they have wrought. If the past ten years have been difficult, the next will be doubly so. But if fire couldn't stop Joan, all the squabbling nobles in the world don't stand a chance. 

"Then we go to Rome," she says. 

As always, her thoughts are a step ahead. He feels a smile overtake him. "Oh? Why to Rome?"

She plucks a tuft of honey-colored grass from the ground and twists it into the shape of a flame. 

"I have a favor to ask of the Pope. I wish him to found for me an order of knights to maintain the peace and keep the Holy Land. Do you think he'll oblige me?"

"The Order of the Maid," Alençon muses. "Who could deny her that, after all she's done?"

She tucks the twist of grass into his doublet and says _mon beau duc._ He can already see it: the white standard with its flame, the men flocking and clamoring to join. He will be first among them. He always is. 

When they walk down the hill, he follows close at Joan's shoulder, glad to leave this place behind. Gladder still that Joan is leaving it behind. It belongs to God, but the dread and awe manifest in every stone here are too rarified for him. He doesn't look back. He keeps his eyes on Joan's dark head as she half-turns to smile at him.

_For I was ever your man and not God's._


End file.
